One of the things that Dear Husband and I like to do when we travel is drive around the area at night. Cities have a completely different vibe after dark. It’s a transformation that many tourists never experience, because so many of them hole up in their hotel rooms at night.
Not us. We explore. It’s quite often my very favorite part of a trip. The architectural icons are lit up beautifully, and the crowded areas around attractions are all but deserted. There is less noise, less traffic, and less heat.
While doing our nighttime jaunt in Minneapolis, DH made a point of having us visit a very sobering memorial. We went to George Floyd Square. It’s not really a square. It’s a two block stretch of road in the Powderhorn community that became a memorial after so many of us bore horrified video witness to Floyd’s murder.
Derek Chauvin, who was a Minneapolis police officer at the time, choked George Floyd to death by kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck for an excruciatingly long 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Bystanders begged Chauvin to stop, and three other officers on scene did not intervene. All four officers have since been convicted.
The police had only been called because a store clerk thought Floyd had tried to pass off a counterfeit 20-dollar bill. That does not justify homicide. And I just realized that the day I’m writing this, May 25, 2023, is the three-year anniversary of that heinous assassination.
It’s all but impossible to find the footage of the murder of George Floyd online anymore, but I still cry when I think about the video that was recorded by an extremely brave 17-year-old girl named Darnella Frazier, whom I’ve written about before. I hope she was able to survive that trauma and continues to be a force for good. I know she got a Courage award and a Pulitzer citation in the interim, but the last thing I can find about her are reports thereof in 2021.
On the third anniversary, the Attorney General who handled the Chauvin case wrote about the bravery of the four young people who had to testify back then, but he gives us no updates about them. I hope Frazier hasn’t been chewed up and discarded by the media. I wouldn’t blame her for wanting to keep a low profile. I hope she has somehow managed to thrive.
Our nocturnal visit to the memorial took place earlier in May, and we had the whole place to ourselves. On the third anniversary, though, at least 100 people showed up to pay their respects. I hope that happens every year, because George Floyd, and what happened to him, should never be forgotten.
I’m embarrassed to say, however, that prior to our visit, I had completely forgotten that this obscene injustice had taken place in Minneapolis. Somehow I conflated it with Flint, Michigan, which is experiencing injustices of a different kind. That reveals a cringe-worthy unconscious bias on my part. I have the luxury of being vague on the details. Some people might consider those details a matter of life and death.
I’ve only had one conversation with a police officer in the past decade. (I do have a bit of a lead foot.) But I was let off with a warning. Of course I was. Who’s going to feel threatened by my fat old white female self? It’s not right and it’s not fair, but I wasn’t about to insist on equal treatment. I prefer not to be thrown down on the pavement by the police or anyone else.
I think what surprised me the most about George Floyd Square reveals yet another unconscious bias of mine. Most of the footage and subsequent witness interviews were close by CUP Foods, a little convenience store that is now called Unity Foods. It looked like the typical crowded inner city corner store. I assumed the neighborhood was dangerous and claustrophobic. I assumed the area would look like street scenes from NYPD Blue or something, completely shabby, with no redeeming qualities. Now I know that I filled in the blanks with no evidence whatsoever. Shame on me.
When we drove up, I immediately recognized the store’s red awning. Looking around, though, I saw a relatively spacious neighborhood on a wide avenue with a park nearby. Granted, it isn’t as affluent as other neighborhoods in Minneapolis are, but I didn’t feel as though we’d be in mortal danger there if our car broke down. It certainly didn’t make me as nervous as certain parts of Seattle do.
Since I’m not from Minneapolis, though, I asked a friend who lives there what type of reputation the Powderhorn community had amongst the locals. She said it had the reputation of being a mix of things. Old and new. Multi-racial. It had a vibrancy about it. It had culture. Yeah, it’s less safe than it could be. But it’s clearly not a slum.
What happened to George Floyd changed Minneapolis forever. All residents are now aware that this kind of thing can and does happen there. I did sense an underlying tension in the air that was made up of sadness, disappointment, and frustration. That must be hard to take, day in and day out.
But the memorial itself was beautiful. It serves as an indictment of police brutality, and it also commemorates an outrageous incident that sparked worldwide protests and calls for reform. Sadly, those pleas, for the most part, have gone unheard by our witless politicians. Let’s hope that the recently released report from the Justice Department will result in systemic changes in the Minneapolis Police Department, at least, but I won’t be holding my breath.
At both ends of the two-block stretch, in the middle of the road, you encounter statues of a raised black fist. A sign declares, “You are now entering the free state of George Floyd.”
Painted on the street were 169 names of people who died due to police brutality. We felt guilty driving over those names. And as we drove, the names seemed to stretch on and on and on.
It was the same type of feeling I get when I visit the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, DC. So many names. All of those human beings gone. But they shouldn’t be gone. None of them should have been killed. None of them deserved it. They were all political pawns in a sick, governmental game that they had never asked to play in the first place. George Floyd did nothing that indicated a desire to be choked to death by Officer Friendly.
In front of the store, you find concrete barricades and flowers. Hundreds and hundreds of flowers. And along the roadside are a series of heart wrenching murals with messages such as “Value black life,” “Stop the violence,” “Say our names,” “I can’t breathe,” “Protect our people,” and, perhaps the saddest of all, “You changed the world, George.”
But did he? He shouldn’t have had to make that sacrifice for us to finally take notice of the gross inequities in this country. If you visit the Mapping Police Violence website, you learn that in just the first 3 months of this year, police killed 301 people in the U.S. There were only 6 days in that three month period in which American police did not kill someone. You also learn that black people in this country are nearly 3 times as likely to be killed by police than white people.
That’s not okay. Our world may have changed, but it still has a very long way to go. If you’re like me, you have to wonder if we have the willpower to pull it off.
Since I did not complete this in time to post it on the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, and his birthday isn’t until October, I’m going to publish it on Juneteenth. But regardless of the date, I hope that George Floyd rests in peace, and that his family and all those who bore witness on that fateful day have been able to find peace as much as possible given the brutal circumstances.
I’ll leave you with the photos we took during our visit, along with a video of the site that DH recorded while driving. (And no, he was not stopped by a cop.) These images are not as moving as being there would be, of course. But I hope they remind you to say George Floyd’s name. It’s the very least that we all can do. Literally.
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